Why is it that you can remember the name of your childhood friend that you haven’t seen in years yet easily forget the name of a person you just met a moment ago? In other words, why are some memories stable over decades, while others fade within minutes?
The first thing to keep in mind is that the most important part of it is the emotion or emotions it brings.
The memories don’t come as a result of the money spent or the elaborate surroundings. The memories come as a result of the little moments when we laughed out loud at something some of us said, the moments we teased each other, during a competitive card game we were playing, the hugs we shared, the conversations we had. The memories come as a result of the time spent together doing anything at all. That’s what drives the memories.
Our memories are what we are, they are the most of what we’ve got, the way we act as we act and love as we love. We would be nothing without our memories but, is it possible to remember everything? No!
We don’t actually remember much of what happens. Instead, we get what we’ve rehearsed. If we fail to rehearse, the memory will fade. The learning we draw from our memories weighs more heavily than the memory itself. This makes us learn to differentiate between what makes us feel good and what makes us feel bad and to always choose the path that leads us feel better.
Like the novel I finished reading recently; there’s this killer that’s killing women that quitted from army due to harrasment (Army harrasment complainants). The killer had killed two women with the same problem of leaving the army, he used the same method to kill them with three weeks interval. He had killed two women before the FBI investigators took up the case to look for him to stop future killings. Part of their investigations was that the killer was somebody those victim knew, well enough to let in their house. No questions asked, like an old friend or something. “Somebody they trusted,” “A friendly visitor.”
So, the killer was somebody they both knew, no forced entry at either abode. “The killer was admitted to the house in both cases by the victim.” “He leaves no evidence,” Absolutely nothing. No fibers, no saliva, no hair, no prints, no DNA.
The Bureau’s experts did arithmetic and found out that eighty-eight women were sent out of army due to harrasment and they didn’t know which one to warn next because they can’t warn them all. They don’t have agents. If they can’t guard them, they can’t warn them. Because exactly what would they be saying? you are in danger, but sorry girls, you are on your own.
Since the killer seems to be somebody those women knew, the Bureau’s experts worked out the person that could likely be the next victim and all what they were asking her was her “Memories whilst she was in the army,” they asked her to dig all the stuff she had buried in her memory, they almost hypnotized her just for them to recall something buried. You know, all those threats she didn’t pay too much attention to at the time, some guy making threats, adverse comments.
My point is that sometimes, it’s just a little thing or point that we need to remember but because we didn’t pay attention to it, we wouldn’t even rehearse it in our memory.
“Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.”
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The ones that last the most in our memory are those who come with powerful emotions, fear, disgust, anger, sadness, and happiness. It is precisely those emotions that get us to learn from our experiences so that, in the future, we know how to make the decisions.
It might be no exxageration to say our memories are the essence of us.
Choosing what we rehearse is a way of choosing who we become!
When considering what makes us who we are, it is easy to think our memories are the answer. And those memories, especially the happy memories, the emotion or emotions it brings will always be with us. It will be those little happy memories that pop back into our minds and help us smile and get through those crazy tough times.
Remember, it doesn’t have to be fancy.
Degokay
This is brilliant, though with some few comments; our memories can’t be trusted sadly. In the USA, there is more case of misremembering of facts to the extent where there were articles about how people were falsely accused of rape due to misremembring of facts and stories of our life that happened in the past.
Most times, just as you’ve noticed, one can surely remember memories but only if it is attach to our part of the brain that holds memories. Most times, most of what happened to us are quickly forgotten – that’s why many people who are abused when they were children would usually need help in remembering their trauma.
Memories are fickles, they can’t be entirely trusted. Everything is a story we tell ourselves – even the lies and disillusionment.
Mrs. AzeezAfeez, A.
Beautiful piece